Books in Brief: Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood

Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood, by Jack Sullivan (Ohio University Press, 155 pp., $12). The ghost story, or tale of the supernatural, is not, one should concede, highly esteemed by everyone. The late H. R. Wakefield, an “undeservedly obscure” practitioner of the craft, was once the recipient of an angry letter from an unhappy reader to this effect: “Why concern yourself with such inane tripe? Why waste a small talent on this bogusness? You’re capable of better, saner things.” Countless others, like this reviewer, share no such prejudice; and Elegant Nightmares, judgments of particular writers or stories aside, is our kind of book. Its author has an obvious relish for the genre; his study is delightfully and humorously written and is based upon an enormous body of literature, to which he has given much care ful thought. Above all, he eschews the more tortured psychological explanations as to why we read these stories. After all, “that we enjoy them is enough. The reasons remain as perverse and mysterious as the stories themselves.” Beyond the acknowledged masters like Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. James, and Algernon Blackwood, Sullivan surveys a variety of lesser-known writers through the years. And though his emphasis is on Victorian and Edwardian writers, he points up the contributions of Russell Kirk and other “absurdly neglected” present-day writers in this tradition. Not since Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature, written over fifty years ago, has there been a work of similar scope and imagination.

MC

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Michael Connors

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Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood, by Jack Sullivan (Ohio University Press, 155 pp., $12). The ghost story, or tale of the supernatural, is not, one should concede, highly esteemed by everyone. The late H. R. Wakefield, an “undeservedly obscure” practitioner of the craft, was once the recipient of an angry letter from an unhappy reader to this effect: “Why concern yourself with such inane tripe? Why waste a small talent on this bogusness? You’re capable of better, saner things.” Countless others, like this reviewer, share no such prejudice; and Elegant Nightmares, judgments of particular writers or stories aside, is our kind of book. Its author has an obvious relish for the genre; his study is delightfully and humorously written and is based upon an enormous body of literature, to which he has given much care ful thought. Above all, he eschews the more tortured psychological explanations as to why we read these stories. After all, “that we enjoy them is enough. The reasons remain as perverse and mysterious as the stories themselves.” Beyond the acknowledged masters like Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. James, and Algernon Blackwood, Sullivan surveys a variety of lesser-known writers through the years. And though his emphasis is on Victorian and Edwardian writers, he points up the contributions of Russell Kirk and other “absurdly neglected” present-day writers in this tradition. Not since Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature, written over fifty years ago, has there been a work of similar scope and imagination.